Crafting, traveling, raising kids and having adventures

Origami Earrings Pt. 1

When it comes to jewelry I like simple, inexpensive things preferably out of materials that one won’t associate with jewelry. So origami fits perfect in this category. Why not make origami earrings.

I got interested in origami a couple of years ago when I wanted to surprise my kids and learned how to fold a dollar bill into origami shirt. Something about the process was magical and soothing to me. A sequence of steps, fold and fold, focus and you get something cool at the end.

Recently Art-o-mat accepted my submission for origami jewelry and as a result I am in the process of creating 50 origami earrings. The following tutorial is one of 3 styles that I came up with (I will share the other two styles in a future post).

Materials:

Paper (it doesn’t have to be origami. Here I used a page out of a catalog, scrapbooking paper, and some leaflets I picked up at the Phoenix Art Museum)

Glue stick

Scissors

Jump rings (you will probably have to make them yourself as they need to be wide. I used a sharpie and wrapped wire around and cut my own jump rings)

Ear wire

Cut your paper in 3″ x 3″ squares, then fold diagonally and cut it again. You will end up with two triangles.

Fold the triangle accordion style on the longest side of the triangle.

And then fold that in half.

Put glue on the inside fold leaving a little bit on top without any glue. This is where your ear wire will go trough. Then press the two sides together to glue them.

Once it’s all glued I like to trim the very bottom a little to give a better shape to the piece.

Your first earring is ready. Make a second one and then you are ready to put ear wires. I had a set of ear wires that where large loops. I am not sure where I got them, but they were easy and convenient to put on the origami.

If you don’t have ear wires like the above, no worries. You will need large jump rings and regular ear wires.

Put the jump rings trough the little opening on top and put the ear wire on the jump ring.

So what do you think? Fairly easy right? You probably have paper laying around that you can make a pair or several pairs yourself. Junk mail is perfect for starters.